I never thought I'd end up telling the tale of my first detention through giggles to my entire roomful of dorm mates, but you know…it happened anyway.

They were all looking either incredibly shocked or deeply impressed.

"Lily! I can't believe that of you!" shrieked Zea, yet another one of my room mates I haven't mentioned yet. I never speak to her anyway, apart from the obvious 'can you pass me my brush/magazine/fill in the gap with own item here.

Yeah, anyway, so Zea had deigned to talk to me tonight because she had overheard me telling Marlene about my, ahem, 'little kneeing incident.' She was looking torn between annoyance and full on new found respect for me. "I mean, you're usually such a good girl!" she continued, tossing her long, straight black hair over her shoulder. Marlene snorted.

"Good girl? Have you seen the amount of detentions she's been going to recently?"

Three pairs of eyes the size of saucers all stared at me. I blushed slightly, but managed to stare defiantly back.

"Detentions?" squealed Zea, practically writhing in excitement, "You've had detentions before tonight, Lily?"

"Uh…yeah," I muttered, raising my eyebrows at her. She gave a short scream and fell dramatically backwards off her bed.

"I'm finding out so much about you tonight, Lily," observed Ashleigh quietly, while Zea struggled to get back on her bed. "I always thought you were quite a reserved person."

I looked over at Marlene, too stunned to speak. She looked back at me, her mouth hanging open. Then at exactly the same time we both squeaked: "Reserved!"

"Guys? Guys? Can someone help me, please?" came Zea's muffled voice, and we all simultaneously turned to look at her legs still slung on top of the bed. "I'm sort of stuck…oh my GOD! EW!"

"What's wrong?" asked Katy lazily, not moving at all to try and help her.

"There is GUM under my BED! WHO HAS BEEN PUTTING GUM UNDER MY BED! "

"Wasn't me!" interrupted Katy, blowing a huge bubblegum bubble, "It must have been the new rebel, Lily." She shot me quite a bitchy look, which I returned in full throttle. Cow. I don't even own any chewing gum, apart from the times I steal off of her. But no-one needs to know about that.

"Lily wouldn't do that, I've never even seen her eat gum!" shrieked Zea's legs.

"You've never seen her go to detentions either, and apparently she's been attending them nightly."

"Shut the hell up, Katy," Ashleigh stepped in before I could, "That gum could have been there before we even moved into this dorm..."

"Yeah!" I added, nodding my head furiously. So ha! I added silently in the privacy of my own mind, but decided not to push Katy any further. She looked…oh, what was the word? Oh yeah: angry.

Zea appeared, her hair a mess, back on her bed at long last. Her face was scarlet. "It's like gum city down there!" she said crossly, "Little bits of blue, red, white blobs hanging off the underside of my bed! I'm never sleeping on my bed again!"

I felt my eyes start to droop with tiredness. It was the night after my detention with Potter, by the way, but we had stayed up until about one o'clock in the morning discussing it. "I'm going to bed," I said over Zea's disgusted rant, "G'night, all."

I drew the curtains and burrowed into my blankets, curling up nice and small. Within about two seconds I was asleep. The last thing I could remember hearing was Marlene saying: "But she's always been like that, you know, she hasn't suddenly turned into a rebel…you just never knew her properly…"

The next morning we all walked down to the Great Hall together. Yes, you can scrape your jaws off of the ground now, I really DID say 'we' as in: me, Marlene, Ashleigh and Zea. But no Katy, thank God.

And to my surprise, they were actually pretty good company.

Zea, despite being annoying girlie, 'absolutely hated Potter, so much in fact if he says one word to me I want to cut his balls off and set them on fire.' Hence me and her had LOADS in common, and spent a lot of the time thinking up increasingly more violent ways to cause Potter pain, which proved to be surprisingly therapeutic.

Ashleigh…Merlin. Out of all of my dorm mates, she was the most shockingly different to my original view of her. It was like she had a split personality. One minute she could be all sweet, caring and, well, nice. Then the next thing you know a really dirty joke or bitchy insult would come tumbling out of her mouth and have us all rolling on the floor gasping for breath.

I mean, obviously, Marlene would always remain my best friend. But hanging constantly around with one person all the time can drive you nuts, and having two new people with us was…urugh, for desperate want of a better word: "refreshing."

I waltzed into the Great Hall that morning with a big, cheesy grin on my face.

We all sat down, laughing away at something Zea said. Then I made the mistake of looking at who I had just sat down next to.

Potter.

He took one look at me and spat his orange juice all over Thingy, who squealed so long and loudly it hurt my ears.

I tried to hide a snigger. I even politely tried to turn my chuckle into a cough. But the sight of Thingy, gently dripping juice, looking as though someone had just mooned him…

Oh alright, I lied. I actually cracked up laughing on the spot and damn near hyperventilated. My honking attracted Marlene's, Zea's and Ashleigh's attention, and pretty soon they were all banging their fists on the table in laughter as well.

Potter, for some reason, wasn't very happy about that.

"Shut up, Evans!" he spat at me. Literally. I felt flecks of spit hit the side of my cheek. Really, nothing calms down your laughter more than being spat on by Potter. Must remember that for the future.

"Why should I, Potter?" I asked him, my eyes straying over to Thingy again, who was desperately trying to wipe the juice out of his hair. Another giggle fought its way out of my mouth. Potter scowled at me.

"You're laughing at nothing, you pathetic little - "

"Oh, I think we are laughing at something, Potter," interrupted Zea, leaning over the table, "How's your groin, by the way?" She raised her voice slightly. "Can you still walk straight after Lily kneed you in the balls?"

That was it. We were gone, just like that. Marlene almost fell off the bench she was laughing so hard, Potter's face was that hysterical. It got even better when Black exclaimed: "WHAT? Evans kneed you in the BALLS, Prongs?"

"Didn't he tell you, Black?" I choked out through my tears of mirth, "That's funny…would you like to hear the whole story?"

"No, he wouldn't!" snarled Potter, and he stood up, making the whole table rock. "C'mon Sirius."

And with that, they both walked out, leaving us to cry with laughter.

Ah, good times. As I slumped over the table, helpless, I looked around at my friends. Ashleigh was red in the face, wiping tears away from her eyes. Zea's make-up was running, but she was still howling with mirth. Marlene had rested her head on the table, her body racked with giggles.

So maybe I had barely spoken to most of them in over five years. Suddenly, it didn't matter. I had a feeling we were all going to get on very well together…

The rest of that Sunday was possibly one of the best days of my life. After Zea had put Potter down so neatly, I couldn't help but want to spend more time with them. It even beat the time I slapped Potter and Black on the same day, which wasn't that long ago. We did what felt like just about everything: went to the library to finish homework, the kitchens to stuff our faces with biscuits, ventured outside to sit by the lake for no reason whatsoever…

I was absolutely freezing sitting by that lake, by the way. It was the beginning of December, for crying out loud. You could almost hear my teeth chattering over the wind ripping through my lungs. Yet at the same time, it was weirdly fun, as we were all huddled together, like penguins, noses blue and fingers numb…but still happy, I found.

"R-r-remind me again, Zea," stuttered out Ashleigh, who's head was wrapped in a blue fuzzy scarf in a desperate attempt to keep her ears warm, "W-why are we here?"

"B-b-because," Zea replied, in a crap attempt at looking totally comfortable outside, with her hands jammed in her armpits to get the feeling back in them, "It's n-nice!"

"Nice!" squeaked Marlene, hugging her knees so closely to her chest her back looked in danger of snapping in half, "You think this is nice?"

"L-Lily ag-agrees with me!"

I did actually. In fact, it was partly my idea to come out here in the first place. I wasn't about to say that, though, I think Ashleigh would have strangled me with her scarf.

"Let's go back in!" I said through blowing on my fingers. Even I had my limits. Marlene looked as though she would melt with the cold. Ashleigh scrambled to her feet at once, shivering violently.

"Race ya to the castle!" she mock-screeched at me, and threw her arms up in the air before running away up the grassy slope, scarf flailing out behind her.

"Mental, that one," shivered Zea, also climbing awkwardly to her feet and hauling Marlene up as well. "F-fine, I give in. I suppose it is p-pretty cold."

"Only a tad," I smiled at her, then hastily closed my mouth as my tongue recoiled from the cold blast of air entering my mouth. We all stumped up the hill after Ashleigh, who was jumping up and down impatiently at the top.

"About bloody time and all!" she gasped at us when we finally joined her, "I'm freezing my non-existent balls off here!"

"We seem to be talking a lot about 'balls' today," remarked Marlene, "Call them the 'male genitalia' can't you?"

"Fine, my non existent male genitals…oh, sod it, let's just say I'm really cold and leave it at that."

It was funny, I mused, as we all went walking back up to the castle, how we had gone from hardly talking to each other to being friends in less than twenty four hours. Sure, I wasn't yet as comfortable around Ashleigh and Zea as I usually was around just Marlene, but that could only get better with time…

Marlene stopped abruptly right in front of me, causing me to head-butt her back and making both of us nearly fall over.

"What are you doing, you daft cow?" I shrieked at her, almost falling flat on my arse but grabbing onto her hair just in time. See what I mean? I wouldn't have said that to Ashleigh or Zea. But Marlene knows I don't mean it. Hopefully.

"Did you see that?" she breathed over her shoulder at me, ignoring my insult.

"No, all I saw was the back of your head as I whacked painfully into it."

She ignored that as well. "No! Look over there!"

She pointed a finger over at the Forbidden Forest, and grumpily I turned my throbbing head to look over there as well. The trees blew in a there's-nothing-there sort of way. From far off, I heard Ashleigh and Zea talking as they carried on up the hill without us.

I looked back at Marlene, but she was still staring over at the Forest with a fascinated look on her face. "What?" I asked, re-scanning the grounds with my eyes, "I can't see anything…"

Down near the base of the trees, I saw a white shape move. I swung my eyes down to look at it, and breathed in sharply. A milky-white stag was rubbing it's antlers on a tree, and stamping its hooves. I could see little white puffs of vapour coming from its nose.

"A stag?" I murmured in disbelief, "I've never seen one of those around here…"

"It gets better," said Marlene suddenly, and she pointed again, slightly to the right of the stag, "Are my eyes deceiving me, or is that a dog?"

And then I saw it as well. It was a dog alright, a black one, rolling happily on its back and kicking its paws in the air.

Errr…was I missing something here?

"Mar…you can see them too, right? A black dog and a white stag?"

"Yup." Well, that wasn't very reassuring. Remember, this is the girl who once swore blind she saw the tooth fairy, when all actually was was her night-light. Wanting more evidence, I turned my head and yelled up the slope "Ashleigh! Zea! Come back and look at this!"

I heard a sharp bark in the distance, and turning my head I saw the dog now on its feet and gazing up at us. Then, simultaneously, the two animals turned on their heels and vanished into the trees.

Ok then…now, either Marlene had spiked my lunch with fire whisky, I was going crazy, or there really were wild dogs and stags living in the forest…

0o0o0o0o0o0

Hello there. Yes, you can all stop pretending to faint from shock now. I KNOW I took my time doing another chapter, but give me a break. I have my mock GSCE's in a week, and I've had about ten tonnes of coursework to finish as well. So you can't really blame me for taking longer than usual...I did try...

Although I am no good at revision, I am going to try my hardest to actually try and drill some informationinto my head this week. Which doesn't leave much room for this story. No, I haven't abandoned it, stop panicking...I'm just not very certain when I will be able to update again, okay?

And while I'm on the subject...anyone got any good tips for revision?

Love to you all,

Bubbles xxx